


The Seven People You Meet In Mexico

by laiqualaurelote



Category: Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 04:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laiqualaurelote/pseuds/laiqualaurelote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Down in Mexico, the Endless walk in and out of El's and Sands's lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Destino

It’s his first day of work in Mexico City, and Sands is late.

 

It’s not that the traffic is hideous in Mexico City.  It’s not that there are no taxis.  There are taxis.  He just picked the wrong one.

 

“We passed that junction five minutes ago!” shouts Sands.  “For serious, hombre, you need to stop screwing around!  It’s my first day of work!”

 

“Everything’s fine, Sheldon,” says the taxi driver.

 

Sands stops in the middle of his rant and stares hard at the driver’s reflection in the rearview mirror.  The driver is an old man, from what Sands can see of him; his eyes are hidden by the brim of a cowl-like cap.  He’s also just used Sands’s first name.

 

“Who the fuck are you?” demands Sands.

 

The taxi driver flips through the book on his lap.  For a street directory it’s abnormally thick, as if it encompasses not just Mexico City but the whole of Mexico.  Every time he turns a page something rattles, like a chain. 

 

“I’m just like you, Sheldon,” he says calmly, not looking up.  “I throw shapes.  I set them up, I watch them fall.  Does that sound familiar?”

 

“So what?  I’m a shape?” This is way too freaky.  Sands is going to freak right out any minute now.  He briefly contemplates whipping out his newly-issued semi-automatic and threatening the driver, but he has a chilly feeling that even that won’t do much.

 

“One of the best.”  The taxi driver pulls up at the pavement.  “And here we are.  Good luck with the assignment.”

 

Sands flips him the finger and dashes out without paying, praying that he’s just made it.

 

He hasn’t.  He’s late.  So late, in fact, that by the time he reports in for his briefing the only assignment left is that half-assed political backwater of La-bloody-Culiacàn, where his express purpose is to play the government and the cartels off each other so that neither side ever gets to win.  Holy fucking majolies. 

 

Years later, Sands reckons that it was this incident that ruined his career.  He can’t shake off the feeling that no matter how many games he plays, he’s still a pawn in someone else’s. 


	2. Desesperaciòn

Bullet in his lung, bullets all through him, all that pain enough to die for. And Carolina, his Carolina, just inches away from him, their little daughter cradled in her arms.

 

He tries to reach them, tries to crawl across that one inch of sand and dust and death that separates his hand and hers, but the strength is seeping from him with the blood and Carolina’s dead eyes are just too far –

 

“There’s an easier way,” he hears a voice say, an ugly voice that chills his already cooling blood. “Let it take you. She’s already gone, there’s nothing left for you here.”

 

He tries to squint into the sun, but all he can see is the silhouette, squat and dark. That voice again – cold, grey, hateful. “Let go. Give yourself to me. Just let go.”

 

He could listen to that voice. He could give in to the bitter fog engulfing his mind, find Carolina’s shade and walk hand-in-hand, the three of them, ghosts for all eternity.

 

But no. He won’t find her, he will never find her – he’s killed too many, too much blood on his hands, he’s bound for hell. And she, a clean, lovely soul, and their daughter with her five years of innocence, he’ll never see them again.

 

He’ll go to hell. But there’s no point in waiting for their killer to come to him there.

 

The voice is screaming in his ears, horrible and unearthly, but he’s up, he’s clinging to the walls, dragging himself out of the blood-spattered plaza. There is something left for him here: his name is Marquez and he wears Carolina’s pendant around his cursed neck.

 

And when that’s done, he’ll think of what to do next. Maybe he’ll give in to the voice then. But only when that’s done.


	3. Deseo

Sands is in love.  He’s been in love since the first time she shot the tile out from under his foot. 

 

Ajedrez downs another shot like a rattlesnake.  Sands watches her carefully, because he’s only known her for a week and he always watches the ones he can’t trust, especially the beautiful ones.  Also because when she swallows he can see it ripple down her long neck, see the curve of her clavicle. 

 

She rolls her eyes at him.  “Quit staring,  _pendejo_.  It creeps me out.”

 

Sands chuckles to himself.  “If you don’t want to be stared at, sugar, then don’t go to strip joints with strange men.  Women in strip joints get stared at.”

 

“Prick.  We’re undercover.”

 

Sands considers flicking his lime at her, but that would just remind her of how childish he can be.  And she might shoot him, which would be such a great end to a bad day.  His car broke down on the highway, the FBI’s been prank-calling him, and when he finally found a restaurant they were out of  _puerco pibil_ , so he considered shooting the entire staff instead of just the cook, except that he ran out of ammo after a couple of waiters.  And his coffee machine is busted five ways from Friday. 

 

Ah well.  Things might get better.  If he doesn’t manage to piss Ajedrez off by the main course, maybe she’ll sleep with him.

 

Up at the bar, the strippers strut their stuff as the band rocks out.  Sands usually doesn’t think much of house bands, but he has to admit that these guys know their stuff.  Or girls – he can’t really tell if that singer is a man or a woman.  He’d go for woman, but it’s so hard to tell these days. 

 

Ajedrez tosses her hair out of her eyes, then grins and rubs her foot languidly up the inside of his calf.  Still in a good mood, then.

 

The singer is looking at them, Sands observes.  Unexpectedly she – he? – winks at them – or at least Sands thinks it’s them, and if it is then that would be just plain weird, so it probably isn’t.  Maybe it’s the funny strobe lights, or too much tequila, but he can swear those eyes are golden.

 

“Anyway.  Your goods.”  Ajedrez tosses around behind her and pulls out a folder of documents, which she flips at him.  Sands fields it and skims through it, grinning.  Ajedrez watches him coyly from the other side of the table.  “Like what you see?”

 

“Yeah,” mutters Sands, “hell yeah.”  And it’s not just the beauty of the jigsaw, the puzzle pieces of the plan, the perfect way they all fit together.  It’s the white queen herself, the cherry on the cake, Miss Mexico in all her glory tipping tequila down her lovely throat.  “So, sugar.  Shall we?”

 

Years later he cannot remember what she looked like, even though she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.  He can’t remember her eyes, her curves, her vixen smile.  What he does remember is the sound of her laugh, and for some reason he can no longer recall he associates it with the colour gold.  Sometimes he thinks that even if he’d known what she’d do to him, he’d have fallen in love all the same.


	4. Destrucciòn

A week after Dia de los Muertos, El meets a traveller coming from the north.

 

El is sitting on the steps of the church, playing for passersby though not for money.  He sees the traveller from a distance, but pays the man no mind until he sits down beside El, unslinging his burden and letting it fall with a dusty thump onto the steps.

 

“Good day,” he says to El in Spanish, not looking at him but smiling vaguely at the sun.

 

El gives him a sideways appraisal.  He can’t tell if the man is Mexican or not, from neither the accent nor the looks, but he has a gut feeling that the traveller is a  _gringo_.  He has the air of one who has walked many miles.

 

“The same to you.”  El stops his strumming, and looks at the stranger.  “What brings you down to Mexico?”

 

“It’s along the way.”  The traveller props his feet on the lowest step, stretches.

 

“To?”

 

“To nowhere.”

 

“Ah,” says El non-committally.  He plucks a couple of chords, before continuing.  “I tried going there once.”

 

“Did you like it?”

 

“I never made it there.  I was sidetracked.”  El thinks of the first time he saw Carolina, in that white dress as she swayed across the road.  She could toss her head and cause a five-car pile-up.

 

The man glances around at the hot road, the dusty landscape.  “I don’t blame you.  It’s a good country, Mexico.  My kind of place.”  He takes a bottle of water out of his pack and swigs.  “You have family here, my fellow traveller?  That what keeps you from moving on?”

 

“I had family,” says El quietly.  “I laid their bones to rest in this earth.  I do not leave their side.”

 

“I see.”  The man caps the bottle thoughtfully.  “My family would like it here, down in Mexico.”

 

“Why don’t you bring them?”

 

“I don’t know where they are,” the traveller replies matter-of-factly.  “Maybe they’re all already here.  It’s a fine place to run to from your destiny, only to collide with it turning the corner.”  He spreads his arms, like a poet declaiming.  “Sort of place where the heat drives you mad and makes you dream of hell.   Days that keep you burning up for something and nights dark as depression.  You people celebrate death here, don’t you?”

 

“Death is very cultural,” remarks El.  “After all, it happens all the time, and we ought to appreciate the mundane.”

 

The traveller laughs.  He’s a big man, big-bearded and red-haired, and his laughter is like a shout.  “My sister would like that one.  She’s into all this philosophy stuff.”

 

“Bring her here, then.”

 

“Ah, she’s probably already been.”  The man eyes the guitar in El’s hands appreciatively, almost hungrily.  “May I?”

 

El passes it over.  The traveller props the guitar on his knees, and tries a few experimental chords.  He’s halfway through the intro of a song, when a string snaps and the song dies like a nightingale with its throat cut.

 

“Oh dear, I’m sorry,” says the man apologetically.  “I can never seem to get anything right.”

 

El takes back the guitar and examines the string.  “It’s okay.  It can be fixed.”

 

“Some things can’t be,” points out the traveller.

 

“Not everything.”  El puts the guitar back into its case and stands up.  “Good day to you.  I hope your journey goes well.”

 

When he reaches the corner and turns to look back, the man is gone.  El never expected him to stay, anyway.


	5. Delirio

Sands doesn’t know where he is.  He thinks he’s in a bar.  He can’t actually be sure, because he can’t see a fucking thing.

 

He can hear her, though.  “sHeLLy, ShEllY, whystherebloODinyourhead?”

 

“Hey, Del,” says Sands.  He lets the Shelly thing slide, if only because they’ve known each other for so long.

 

He hears her giggle.  “eyesinyourdrink.  eyesinyourdrink.  diD YoU bLOw hER brAiNs OUt?”

 

“No.  Shot her in the stomach.”  His own cringes at the memory.  “She was beautiful, though.  Fucking beautiful bitch.”

 

Del begins to hum.  Something damp and tickly crawls over his hand, probably one of her frogs.  Sands is guessing purple, and the idea makes him laugh for some reason.  Del joins in, her laughter like champagne, bubbles fighting for the surface like drowning sailors – rich, gold and burbly.

 

“Never thought I’d say it, Del – but it’s great to see you again, baby.”

 

“mIssED you.”  A thoughtful note creeps into her kaleidoscopic voice.  “dO yOU ReALLy wANt tO?  sEE mE, i mEan.”

 

A prickle of annoyance.  “Del.  You know I can’t.  They took my fucking eyes.”

 

“cAn tOO.  tAKe mINe.”  A hand over his empty eye sockets; when he opens them, he is seeing, everything bright and light and more dazzling than any other sight he has opened his eyes to.  Del is perched on a birdbath, large as life and twice as colourful, against a background of a Mexico with blue sand, orange sky and traffic-light cacti.  Her eyes are what his eyes must have looked like when they drilled them out, great empty holes with the blood patching on her cheeks.

 

“LiKE tHIs PlaCE,” says Del happily, kicking her legs.  “bLooD n bULLetS n lotsoflotsof bOOze n the HeAt plAYs wibblegameswithyourhead.  RuNninG aWAy wITh tHe sHinY dU Jour, pAraMOur.”

 

“And all that jazz,” agrees Sands.  He sits down on the ultramarine sand, still in shock from all the colour.

 

Del pulls an eggcup out of her jacket, fills it in the birdbath and hands it to him.  Sands drinks up.  The liquid is green and bubbly and tastes amazingly like tequila.

 

“don’t gO PLayINg wItH GiRls LiKE tHat,” admonishes Del as he drinks.  “B-I-T-C-H-E-S, allofthem.  bEttER oFf sTicKIng WiTh mE.”

 

‘Will drink to that,” concurs Sands, and does so.  The fumes are going to his head, or maybe it’s just the Mexican heat that’s creating the mirages and making the desert wriggle.

 

Del sucks on her ring finger, inspects the bleeding sun.  “tIme fOR yOu To gO nOw.”

 

“What?” protests Sands, standing up.  “But I just got here!”

 

“N-NopE,” sings Del.  “N-N-N.  gOTTa gO.”

 

“Del, wait – ”

 

Del giggles, reaches out and pushes him in the middle of his forehead with one long finger.  Sands keels over like timber.

 

“How much has he drunk?”

 

Familiar voice, that.  God, the stench of the place. 

 

“Just put it on my tab.  C’mon, gringo.  We’re getting out of here.”

 

“Fuck you,” Sands tries to say, but it comes out all slurry.  El hauls him up and manhandles him out of the bar, and damn it if his legs aren’t working like they were before he walked in.

 

“You were talking just now,” remarks El as they go, “to someone named Del. Who is Del?”

 

“Young lady you’ve never have the pleasure of meeting,” spits out Sands. 

 

He bangs his hip on a car boot and swears, and that’s when he realizes that he’s back in the dark, that she’s taken her eyes back.  Sands stands in the middle of the street, blind and hopeless and knowing that he’ll never see,  _see_ Mexico again, and suddenly he wants to cry.


	6. Sueño

El is dancing with Carolina, laughing Carolina in her red dress.  They are a couple on a floor of shadowy couples, Carolina the only flame of colour in the dark crowd.  They dance to music plucked from the air, guitar music.

 

He dips Carolina over his arm, and in the too-perfect arc of her lovely neck he hits the realization that she is not in fact there, she is dead in the earth and this is a dream.

 

The woman whose grave he lays sunflowers on every Dia de los Muertos whirls under his arm, her skirts flaring out.  Now they are at the front of the hall, and he can see the musician, a mariachi El has never met – a dark man, whose hair hangs in his eyes the way El wore his in his youth, but whose skin is paler than Mexican wont.

 

The dark mariachi plucks with long white fingers, and music pours forth from the black guitar like a river of heartbreak in spring flood.  Carolina dances El up to him, and the man looks up, the hair falling abruptly away from his features.

 

El’s breath catches in his throat.  The man’s eyes are like Sands’s – great empty holes where the eyeballs should be.  But where Sands has horrific scars, the mariachi has whole universes of black speckled with tiny stars.

 

The white fingers still on the strings; then one rises and beckons.  Carolina, still swaying from the dance, detaches herself and runs to the dark man; her fingers slip from El’s like a handful of water.

 

El tries to follow, to cling to her shade, but his legs are lead, all movement dead in him.  Carolina takes the stranger’s arm, and together they walk away from him, leaving him in the empty hall.

 

El shouts her name and comes awake with it on his lips.  His hands are fisted so hard that his nails have ripped into his palms. 

 

“Nightmares, huh?” Sands is sitting in the basketchair, shoulders hunched, the hollows of his eyes shadowed so that he looks almost normal.

 

El inspects his bleeding palms.  “You too?”

 

Sands shrugs, and hands him a glass of water.  El takes it with murmured thanks, drinks deeply.  He knows of Sands’s dreams, how he relives the last sight of the drill descending upon him, the agony.  In the night, when El knows loss, Sands knows terror.

 

El presses the cool glass to his burning forehead.  Sands fears his ghosts.  El doesn’t know if he would rather keep seeing them or lose them forever, which is worse. 


	7. Muerte

Sands opens his eyes.

 

No, that can’t be right.  He doesn’t have any.

 

But there’s the sky above him, bright as anything, and the heat of the sun blazing full-force at his face corresponds to its blinding white. 

 

Sands sits up.

 

He’s in the desert, all alone.  The clean sands stretch out around him for mile after empty mile, furrowed lightly by the hot wind.

 

Sands tries to remember how he got here.  Then the memory hits him.

 

“Shit.  Those fuckmooks!”

 

But there’s no blood, no bulletholes in his jacket, no pain; in fact, he feels so utterly weightless that he’s surprised that his body is still around. 

 

There can only be one explanation for all this.  It’s not one that Sands likes.

 

“I’m afraid it is, though,” someone interrupts his train of thought before he can get around to cussing.  “Sheldon Jeffrey Sands?”

 

“Me, yeah, that’s me.”  Sands squints against the sun’s glare.

 

She’s dressed in a black panne velvet gown ablaze with ruffles that whisper like the desert wind when she walks forward, no shadow on the sand.  Her bare shoulders, white and flawless, are an anomaly in the sunstreaked landscape.  He sees the gleam of the cross that every devout Mexican woman wears upon her bosom, but as she draws closer he realizes it’s no crucifix, but an ankh.

 

A black mantilla veil shadows her pale features, but her eyes twinkle, and her smile’s friendly enough.  “Del sends her love,” she remarks. 

 

Sands takes her proffered hand, and she pulls him up without any seeming effort.  “Tell her hey for me.  So, what now?”

 

Death points her lace fan over his shoulder.  Sands swivels, and sees it: a little hacienda in the middle of the desert, a shiny pop-up in the flat landscape; clean, whitewashed, perfect.  Wooden porch framed in elegant white arches, bottle palms in big urns soldiering the steps, the tiny green door.

 

Sands stares at it, then glances at her.  Death winks at him.  “All yours.”

 

“What’s behind the door?”

 

Death taps her fan on her shoulder, shrugs.  “That’s entirely up to you.”

 

“Okay,” says Sands.  “Can I have a moment?”

 

“Sure.” Death sits down on the porch steps, smoothing the ruffles out around her little feet.  “Take all the time you want, cowboy.”

 

Sands takes a deep breath, and looks.  He looks at the sky, at the sun, the sand, the horizon.  He drinks Mexico through his eyes. 

 

“I’m ready,” he says at last.

 

Death snaps the fan shut.  “After you,” she says pleasantly, standing up to let him pass.

 

Sands clunks up the steps of the porch, the bromeliad ferns hanging from the ceiling tickling his ears.  He appraises the pea-green door with its flaking paint, then runs a hand along it until it takes hold of the handle.  Sands shuts his eyes, opens the door and steps through.

 

Death, smiling senorita, holds the door open and swishes in after him.  Then the green door shuts on the silent desert. 


End file.
